The invention relates to an electronic dictionary and language interpreter having the capability to display multiple inflections.
In the past, electronic dictionaries have searched for a head word of a first language and a translation word of a second language equivalent to the head word based on an entry word input by a keyboard, and displayed the head word and the translation word. Moreover, electronic dictionaries which display inflections of a word using their function have already been sold. Particularly in conjugation, electronic dictionaries have already been sold which display a head word and a translation word using a phrase form having a subject.
However, there are a great many inflections in some languages. For example, in Spanish, there are about two hundred conjugation combinations of the person (including the first person, the second person and the third person; the singular and the plural; the masculine gender and the feminine gender); and the tense. Therefore, almost all prior electronic dictionaries have displayed only some of the possible combinations. As the prior electronic dictionaries have not been easy to operate and have not immediately displayed conjugation combinations of the person and the tense according to a user's expectations, they have been very inconvenient to use.
Moreover, the prior art electronic dictionaries have always displayed an explanatory message of the person, such as the first person/the second person/the third person, the singular number/the plural number, and the masculine gender/the feminine gender and the tense, such as the present/the past/the future with conjugations or have displayed nothing about the explanatory message. In the former dictionaries, users who wanted to know only the conjugations have not been able to recognize them because of the display of extra message information. The latter dictionaries lack information for users who wanted to study.